As we continually strengthen the connection between our clients’ needs and our development initiatives, we’ve gone to great lengths to follow an Agile approach toward development. By employing the Scrum methodology, we’re gearing our efforts toward early and continuous delivery of technical excellence and good design to provide our clients with a single view of their customer profiles. If you are a developer or agency managing customer identities, you may be considering employing Scrum at your organization. Read on to learn about our perspective.

The words we choose to express ourselves and propose ideas matter greatly, not just in how ideas are perceived but in how the listener reacts emotionally and, ultimately, accepts or rejects the proposed ideas. Introducing a new process to a set of stakeholders is a good example: the words we choose to describe and define the new method can affect whether it is met with comfort, excitement and understanding or with fear, suspicion and trepidation. If a new process is presented too abstractly or the change is perceived as too grand, people may become fearful and reluctant, finding the adoption difficult. It is important that we mitigate this fear by proposing process changes in the clearest, least abrasive and most comfortable manner possible, with careful consideration for the right language.

If you feel that the introduction of Scrum may be met with hesitation or trepidation by management, the development team, customers, or others, try using common language to introduce the ideas, instead of the formal Scrum language found in texts such as The Scrum Guide. The formal language, though valuable in its own right, can be abstract and confusing to someone who is not already familiar with Scrum. Downplay the formality and use everyday language to carry across the commonsense Scrum concepts, presenting them in an easy-to-understand manner.

Example of common language

Here is one example of a common-language description of Scrum, which does not use any formal Scrum language:

The process starts by organizing all our work into one list and prioritizing each piece based on its value to the business. For each work item — feature requests, technical debt, bug fixes, etc. — we’ll create a separate ticket or notecard, with the acceptance criteria clearly written, giving us a tangible representation of the work we can use to prioritize items against each other. Make sure to evaluate each item and break it down into the smallest independent deliverable so that we can have a clear view of the overall work ahead of us. Someone will need to assume accountability for the overall prioritization of the work as well as advise on the specifications.

We’ll organize a team of developers (or whomever the team may consist of) who, as a unit, have the skills to complete the prioritized work themselves, from start to finish. It’s best if we’re able to keep the team members constant so that over time they become an increasingly efficient team together.

Once the work is broken down and prioritized, and the team is assembled, we’ll gather together as a group to determine what work we can accomplish over the course of the next two weeks. At this time, the development team can, in addition to discussing the technical details of the work, give each item a rating of complexity from 1 to 5 so that we have a general idea of how much effort each work item requires compared to the others.

When development work is underway, we’ll quickly touch base at the beginning of each day so that everyone on the team will know what everyone else is working on. It’s also a chance to call out anything blocking progress so that we can resolve those issues promptly.

At the end of the two weeks, the development team will show their work to the larger base of interested stakeholders, who will see what was accomplished and have an opportunity to give feedback or ask for change requests. After we review the work, I’ll get together with the development team to chat about how the last two weeks went and ask whether there is anything we want to do differently process-wise, going forward, to make things better.

In addition, at the end of the two weeks, we’ll quantify the amount of work we completed by summing up the 1-to-5 ratings of all the completed items. This will give us a very general estimate of how much work we can expect to complete during the next two weeks.

We will need to keep the prioritization of work up to date since changes in dependencies and the value to the company of various work items is always in flux. We can schedule, as needed, a regular meeting to make sure that our work priorities are current, acceptance criteria are clear, etc.. If we like, we can invite the development team for early technical feedback.

I’ll keep an eye on things and help facilitate the various meetings. I’ll also make sure to keep the work organized and in front of everyone. As well, I can help the team resolve any blockers they have, and help guide them to be the most effective team possible.

Scrum-speak

This previous example does not use any of the formal Scrum language, but it gets the point across and touches on many of the core concepts of Scrum. The following maps the description to the more formal Scrum terminology:

Backlog: “Organizing all the work into one list and prioritizing each piece based on its value to the business.”

Backlog grooming: “A regular meeting to make sure that our work priorities are current, each item’s acceptance criteria are clear, and if we like, we can invite the development team for early technical feedback.”

Daily Scrum: “Quickly touch base at the beginning of each day so that everyone on the team can know what everyone else is working on. As well, it’s a chance to call out anything blocking progress so that we can resolve those issues promptly.”

Product owner: “Assume accountability for the overall prioritization of the work as well as advise on the specifications.”

ScrumMaster: “Keep an eye on things and help facilitate the various meetings, make sure to keep the work organized and in front of everyone, help the team resolve any blockers they have, and help guide them to be the most effective team possible.”

Scrum team: “A team of developers (or whomever the team may consist of) who, as a unit, have the skills to complete the prioritized work themselves, from start to finish.”

Sprint: “The next two weeks” or “the last two weeks.”

Sprint planning: “To determine what work we can accomplish over the course of the next two weeks.”

Sprint retrospective: “After we review the work, I’ll get together with the development team to chat about how the last two weeks went and ask whether there is anything we want to do differently process-wise, going forward, to make things better.”

Sprint review: “At the end of the two weeks, the development team will show their work to the larger base of interested stakeholders, who will see what was accomplished and have an opportunity to give feedback or ask for change requests.”

Stories: “For each work item — feature requests, technical debt, bug fixes, etc. — we’ll create a separate ticket or notecard, with the acceptance criteria clearly written, giving us a tangible representation of the work that we can use to prioritize items against each other.”

Story points: “Give each item a rating of complexity from 1 to 5 so that we have a general idea of how much effort each request requires compared to the others.”

Velocity: “At the end of the two weeks we’ll quantify the amount of work we completed by summing up the 1-to-5 ratings of all the completed items. This will give us a very general estimate of how much work we can expect to complete during the next two weeks.”

If you think introducing Scrum to your company or stakeholders could be met with trepidation and reluctance, don’t be overly abstract, and don’t overplay the complexity of this otherwise simple-to-understand, highly beneficial framework. It may hinder your cause to introduce this commonsense method with uncommon language. On the other hand, making some of the changes suggested above is one means to provide a more accessible introduction and pave the way for a positive perception of the changes you propose. Scrum language can be introduced later, after the concepts are understood. Using more common descriptions at first will help everyone feel more comfortable with the road ahead.

If you’d like to learn more about the technical side of Janrain, please visit our Developer Portal.

Consumers and HCPs alike expect seamless and safe experiences when accessing their digital worlds, and enterprise clients have an opportunity to collect rich customer insights along the way to better deliver on this expectation. With consumers spending time in more interactive non-traditional channels and HCPs limited by “low-see” restrictions, companies must find new ways to connect.

Companies need to be aware of digital forces that are shaping increased consumer expectations and include these in their approach to activate HCPs and consumers: mobile, social, cloud, IoT, passwordless, analytics, security and the personalized customer journey. Gain trust from consumers and HCPs while also gathering important identity data through three key ways: secure, manage and activate.

Secure customer and HCP data

Privacy and security are paramount for HCPs and consumers today. Ninety percent of consumers are concerned about data privacy, but, according to our identity trends survey, consumers are willing to share their data if they will receive something in return. And, they are twice as likely to share data with a company if they know it will not be shared with other companies.

As we look for new opportunities to connect with physicians, companies should maintain audit trails and scope access. Allowing consumers and physicians to control their access can be huge in connecting with them on a personal level. Allow them to opt in for SMS messages or to connect with a personal email, rather than a company email. Understanding where permissions have been granted and who granted those permissions is crucial.

Use biometrics to activate consumers

People have not always been comfortable using biometrics, but thanks to new technologies, especially mobile, they are more comfortable with logging in using a fingerprint or voice activation. We found that two-thirds of consumers are comfortable using these technologies, up from under 20 percent of consumers willing to use it four years ago.

Photo courtesy of Validic

Patients expect and want more personalized medicine. They are more willing to share personal information with pharmaceutical companies in exchange for personalized medicine and a better understanding of their health. In a recent study of research organizations, pharmas, and biotechs, most are already using digital tech in clinical trials, and virtually everyone expects their use to grow throughout the patient lifecycle.

Manage consumer identities to create personalized experiences

Only 21 percent of consumers feel that companies are doing a good job marketing to them in a way that’s relevant. In order to incentivize consumers and HCPs to remain loyal while also being able to monetize those relationships, companies must create personalized experiences.

What we’ve found is that when companies can put a unified customer identity at the center of their digital marketing, they can better engage consumers as they progress through each stage of the customer journey. This takes consumers from awareness and a reason to register through to converting anonymous visitors into known consumers, and leveraging the information we know about them to drive deeper loyalty and advocacy across the entire marketing funnel.

Check out our recent ePharma webinar to learn more about how to engage customers and HCPs with digital strategies.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/using-digital-to-activate-hcps-and-consumers/5 things all CIAM vendors should be doing to protect customer datahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/Xny_sKML7JU/
Wed, 09 Nov 2016 17:00:16 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32265How many times have you received a password reminder with your actual password and not a reset link? That means the brand is storing the...

How many times have you received a password reminder with your actual password and not a reset link? That means the brand is storing the password in plain text, and this still happens and with some pretty high-profile brands.

The protection of personally identifiable information (PII) should be top of mind for all businesses. Are creative or digital agencies storing data safely (encrypted at rest) and sending it to their clients securely (encrypted in transit), or is the client services manager emailing the brand manager a CSV of PIIs each Friday? Are those free gig tickets worth the risk of being pwned?

As more information goes online, the threat of disastrous breaches increases, which is why security is more important than ever. Brands and companies are increasingly outsourcing the risk to customer identity and access management (CIAM) vendors to maintain customer data.

So far this year, there have been over 500 data breaches, exposing more than 12 million identity records, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Coupled with the recent Yahoo! Breach that exposed 500 million records, having a CIAM solution is increasingly becoming table stakes.

As companies collect data, they take on the responsibility to keep that information safe. The security of customer identities also directly impacts margins and brand equity. IBM’s recent data breach survey showed that the cost of a breach has grown 2.5% annually, and in real terms could reduce Verizon’s valuation of Yahoo! by $200 million.

As a custodian of customer data, it is mission-critical that CIAM vendors focus their energies on security and privacy rather than be distracted by trivial non-vital functionality such as gamification (which can be delivered by a niche vendor).

How can businesses tell if their CIAM vendor is enterprise level and a serious contender for outsourcing their risk? Check that they offer these five things.

1. Layered security

It’s important that your CIAM solution uses appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards to help protect the security, confidentiality and integrity of customer data. If your solution gives access to data at all levels, the risk of a breach or mistake happening is greater.

Find a solution that provides security at the systems and applications layers. Some CIAM solutions partner with the industry cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides its own security for its infrastructure and data centres. Take the time to learn about a platform’s partners and how they store data. It will ultimately affect your customers.

2. Restricting and monitoring access

Make sure you know who will have access to your customers’ data. Does the vendor restrict access on their end? Some providers refer to this as scoped access, a way to help ensure that only the minimum level of data is available to each individual and provides built-in, customisable field-level scoped access capability for websites, mobile apps, tools and integrations.

Internal governance is critical – make sure you have the ability to restrict access for who can access the data. Your CIAM solution should allow for restrictions and monitoring ability to ensure that only those who absolutely need access from your company can view and manage customer data. The more people who have access, the greater the possibility for unintentional data leaks.

3. Certification practices and compliance

What security certifications and compliances does your vendor have and are they are working to obtain more?

While security is important to all, certain industries require that CIAM solutions comply with industry standards. Finance, pharmaceutical and government companies have to especially make sure they are following and meeting all requirements – ensure your CIAM provider is.

4. Availability

It’s difficult to predict when and where events that require disaster recovery and data backup will occur, so it’s necessary to always be prepared. If you have data stored in only one location and that place experiences a disaster, you lose everything.

Make sure your CIAM provider has data backed up to servers in a separate data centre than the one where your customer production data is hosted, to reduce the risk of loss.

To provide extra security, you can have backup storage solutions as a company to make sure you reduce that risk as well.

5. Third-party testing

After making sure your CIAM provider has these in place, find out if they conduct third-party testing. Performance monitoring to proactively detect and remediate brute force and denial-of-service attacks is important. Vulnerability scans, penetration testing and intrusion detection of CIAM platforms can also prevent disastrous breaches.

Don’t get swayed by the shiny suites – no number of baubles, widgets or ‘extra’ features could ever make up for a breach of millions of customer profiles. CIAM is risk mitigation – everything else is secondary.

Learn more about how Janrain works to protect customer data, or contact us with any further questions about our trusted CIAM solution. ‘

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/5-things-all-ciam-vendors-should-be-doing-to-protect-customer-data/How CIAM fits into your existing data architecturehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/qoMdQwT7gNQ/
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 17:00:16 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32249As the blueprint for all the systems within an organization, data architecture provides the approach for how data flows and is processed across systems and...

]]>As the blueprint for all the systems within an organization, data architecture provides the approach for how data flows and is processed across systems and applications. And today’s modern data architecture creates a more deliberate and intricate blueprint than ever before.

As companies progress into new realms of information delivery, the old models of data architecture aren’t enough for real-time and data-driven business demands. To gain a competitive advantage and react more quickly to market conditions, companies must adopt new data architecture models to allow for real-time reaction.

That’s where a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution comes in. A CIAM solution enables you to route data in real time, with all systems flowing through the solution before landing in your data lake. This allows you to custom design how you aggregate customer preferences across multiple platforms, creating an omni-channel experience for the user.

By integrating CIAM into your data architecture you:

Enhance security data protection

Gain access to real-time business intelligence analytics

Take immediate action based on new insights

Generate ad hoc discovery and reporting

Ultimately, a CIAM integration helps you better understand your customer. The real-time nature of the solution allows you to start working with information immediately with added security and encryption, multi-platform analytics and governance. Check out the animated video below to get a better look at how a CIAM solution can enhance your business objectives.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/ciam-fits-existing-data-architecture/Key considerations in selecting a CIAM solutionhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/CJpgRF4XySY/
Tue, 01 Nov 2016 17:09:44 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32231The rise of the social customer creates tremendous opportunities for organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers in support of their business objectives. Whether...

The rise of the social customer creates tremendous opportunities for organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers in support of their business objectives. Whether the goals are to acquire new customers, increase on-site engagement, collect and leverage customer insights, or all of the above, a comprehensive customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution will play a critical role.

A robust, extremely flexible, secure CIAM solution can help improve website conversion, create meaningful points of interaction, and collect intelligence to build a more complete picture of each customer to present personalized experiences, content and offers. But, not all CIAM solutions are created equal.

To help aid the process of choosing the right CIAM solution for your business, we’ve put together a document of key points to consider.

First, it’s important to consider the big picture:

What are you trying to achieve on your website(s)?

Do you want to understand who your visitors are and what behaviors they are displaying while on your website?

How do you want your customers to engage with your website?

Do you know what to do with customer data that is collected using a customer identity and access management solution?

How important is keeping your customer data secure?

Next, it’s critical to dive deeper. Look at the CIAM solution’s security, analytics, implementation support, integrations and extensions. Ask questions that are specific to your company and get clear answers to truly understand how the CIAM solution will support your customer data.

As a guide, we’ve created a Key Considerations document that goes into detail about each important aspect of a CIAM solution and some questions to ask when comparing different platforms. If you’re interested in learning more, please download the Key Consideration document now or contact the Janrain sales team today.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/key-considerations-selecting-ciam-solution/Large NYC company sees 1300% YOY increase in customer registrationshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/DvGSdSBryxA/
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 16:00:37 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32206This large New York City company is a world leader in live sports and entertainment with a portfolio of legendary sports teams, exclusive entertainment productions...

This large New York City company is a world leader in live sports and entertainment with a portfolio of legendary sports teams, exclusive entertainment productions and celebrated venues. In its pursuit to deepen and broaden brand engagement with fans and ticket holders, the company formed a centralized digital team to identify a solution that would provide a unified, single view of customer information across its owned brands and properties. The team was tackling two main challenges:

Company-wide they were unable to leverage the amount of siloed data held in disparate platforms for each individual business unit. Business units were unable to work together and identify, for example, that a customer who purchased tickets for a given event was also a fan of one of its other brands.

The data they were relying on was not being provided in real time, thus shortening the window of opportunity to respond to a customer’s engagement activity.

The most important capability it sought was a real-time, centralized database of user profiles for all of its brands. They also wanted to enrich their understanding of their customers and improve the user experience. To address these issues, the team partnered with Janrain and focused on implementing two solutions: Social Login and Registration.

The team chose the website of one of its well-known shows as the pilot project. They re-launched with the Janrain Registration platform including Social Login and all existing customer accounts were migrated to Janrain’s Customer Profile Database. The company started seeing ROI immediately. Teams across the company were able to view real-time customer identities and how they interacted with the website.

With the Janrain solution, the company was also able to track their customers’ guests, often people with whom they share tickets, via unique promo codes and gain access to a whole new market of customers.

Because of this, the company grew their database of registered users for the website with a 1300% increase in registration year over year within the first three months of implementation.

You can learn more about how Janrain helped the company segment customer data, provide real-time insights and drastically increase their customer registrations in our latest case study.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/large-nyc-sports-entertainment-company-sees-1300-yoy-increase-customer-registrations/Flipping customer analytics inside outhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/ORckjiZd4xs/
Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:00:30 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32138Traditional web analytics provide you with a lot of averages. What pages are people visiting, on average? How long do they stay, on average? Which...

]]>Traditional web analytics provide you with a lot of averages. What pages are people visiting, on average? How long do they stay, on average? Which channels convert the best, on average? But if you only pay attention to averages, you’ll never be more than an average marketer.

Smart marketers are turning web analytics inside out. Instead of looking at where all of your web traffic goes, they look at each unique customer journey and then determine the relevant commonalities between them. This gives you the ability to go way beyond the old, outdated method of understanding visitors’ often unique (and unpredictable) behaviors. With inside out analytics, you can pull deep insights from individual customer journeys by aggregating individual customer journeys into meaningful audience segments and then impacting those segments differently.

For example: What is the path to purchase for 35 year-old women from the Midwest? Is it the same as or different than the path for 22 year-old men from the South? This can lead to surprising insights. It may turn out that 22-year old southern men don’t like listening to the Alabama Shakes, but 35 year-old midwestern women do. You may also find that college-bound students just aren’t interested in the latest goal-oriented apps that professional 40 somethings crave.

Engaging customers

Companies that use and implement inside out analytics are better able to engage with their customers. It’s important to ask and understand:

What do your customers want?

Where are they spending their digital time?

What are your customers doing right now?

What can you do to be part of the conversation?

As companies look to single touchpoints and interactions with real individuals, they can begin to map out unique customer journeys. Creating truly compelling experiences that keep customers coming back is challenging because customers expect individualized experiences that follow them from each digital touchpoint. By viewing customer journeys and understanding customer identity, companies can gain insight that will help them create memorable experiences.

At Janrain, we offer a customer engagement solution to help create these personalized experiences by diving into inside out analytics. We help companies drive meaningful engagement across digital experiences while generating and collecting behavioral data. We’ve seen this help companies further personalize customer interactions and drive deep and frequent engagement.

Creating loyalty through inside out analytics

When Whole Foods wanted to create connected customer experiences across devices, they turned to inside out analytics. The retailer wanted to create channels to make it easy for shoppers to save time and decrease the effort in the planning and preparation of meals. They wanted to personalize their customer experiences by capturing useful profile information and preferences for retargeting and provide seamless access to an in-store app for busy shoppers to use on the fly.

They used a CIAM platform to power registration and customer profile management across each of its digital touch-points. They created a connected customer experience by enabling customers to sync preferences and unify the online, mobile and in-store experience. Shoppers can store personal preferences, save content for later on the website and move through the store quickly.

Whole Foods is able to use these preferences to better understand each customer. Rather than using analytics as a whole, the retailer put an emphasis on finding ways to understand their customers on a personal level and use the data to create better, unique experiences. By doing so, Whole Foods increased their customer loyalty.

Sparking product innovation

Philips used inside out analytics to spark their product innovation. The company, which is all about improving people’s lives through meaningful technology advancements, implemented a cloud-based identity solution to help them collect product feedback from individual customers.

By focusing on each unique individual, they are better able to understand customer needs and bring more relevant products to market.

For example, the Philips Sonicare app connects with the Sonicare toothbrush to help users monitor the effectiveness of their brush head, focus on certain areas for extra care when brushing, set daily goals and be aware of any missed areas while brushing. Through this app, Philips is creating a unique experience for each customer while gaining valuable insights. These insights and analytics are then used to create even more personalized experiences for each customer.

Inside out analytics is how many companies will get ahead of the competition and gain loyal customers. If you want to learn more about how we help companies do this every day, go hereto learn more.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/flipping-customer-analytics-inside/Building consumer trust through privacy best practiceshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/JXAug_LMJ04/
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 15:17:47 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=32058As the pace of innovation within the marketing technology landscape continues to accelerate, companies have the opportunity to craft more personalized experiences for customers across...

As the pace of innovation within the marketing technology landscape continues to accelerate, companies have the opportunity to craft more personalized experiences for customers across their digital touch-points. To power these new experiences and still respect an individual’s right to data privacy, the collection, storage and access of user profile data has emerged as a key component of the enterprise technology stack.
To ensure customer data remains safe in the wake of disastrous breaches, such as the recent Yahoo breach, it’s best to follow best practices within data collection and sharing.Transparency
Whenever data collection occurs, customers should be notified, all intended uses should be called out and the benefits should be articulated. With this level of transparency, customers can make an informed choice about whether they are comfortable with the data exchange, with the added benefit of building confidence with the brand requesting the information.
To power these new experiences and still respect an individual’s right to data privacy, the collection, storage and access of user profile data has emerged as a key component of the enterprise technology stack.Progressive Profiling
Many data collection practices seek to gather as much information about the user at each interaction, regardless of whether the data will be used as part of the engagement. Progressive profiling is based on the idea that only the data needed to support that engagement is collected and that profiles are built over time as part of an ongoing, trust-based relationship. By only requesting the information that is needed, customers are more likely to provide their personal details since the request is within the context of the engagement.Preference and Communication Management
Access to shared data is a core privacy principle. However, it is also an opportunity to extend the relationship with the customer by allowing them to determine when and how they receive marketing communications. Placing these controls in the hands of the end consumer demonstrates that data is going to be used according to the customer’s preferences, not the marketer’s.

This is also an opportunity to limit the number of marketing systems that contain customer data. If a customer has opted out of email communications, then your Email Service Provider doesn’t need to store any data about that customer.Privacy by Design
Data privacy and security cannot be an afterthought when it comes to data collection and storage. Data protection and access are an essential design element of the marketing technology stack. In other words, companies should not be handing out keys to the front door to get all of their customer data. Systems and individuals should have scoped access to the data that is needed to support the business use case instead of sending the entire user profile to each system.
Companies should not be handing out keys to the front door to get all of their customer data. Systems and individuals should have scoped access to the data that is needed to support the business use case instead of sending the entire user profile to each system.
Data breaches can impact the bottom line of a business and controlling access to data ends up being a central piece for companies today. Integrations are critical because security is at a point where the weakest link isn’t the bad actors breaking into a system, rather it’s the people who have access, and it gets abused. Make sure to lock down all of your integrations and then decide if these integrations have too much data.
When selecting a CIAM vendor, companies need to ensure its solution uses these best practices. At Janrain, controlling access to data is a core capability of our CIAM solution. Each system is explicitly authorized to access necessary profile elements, which limits the amount of data that is stored outside of the CIAM solution. Lowering exposure of profile data helps prevent potential leaks or breaches. We continually ensure our clients’ customer data is safe and secure.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/building-consumer-trust-privacy-best-practices/Blog series: How to choose the best CIAM platform for your brandhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/Ewisf9I7_Ys/
Wed, 05 Oct 2016 16:00:26 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=31959As digital technologies continue to shape consumer expectations and behavior, only a quarter of executives think their firms have an appropriate digital business strategy in...

]]>As digital technologies continue to shape consumer expectations and behavior, only a quarter of executives think their firms have an appropriate digital business strategy in place to respond, according to Forrester.

Then there’s the matter of security and compliance standards for each geography and industry in which you market. You’re looking for a solution that passes third-party security certifications regularly, such as SOC 2, HIPAA and ISO.

Preserve your customers’ privacy

In looking to preserve your customers’ privacy, it’s important to ask two questions:

Does the CIAM platform support your compliance with local privacy laws?

In each country where your brand operates, you have to comply with local privacy laws. Your CIAM should allow for nation- or region- specific control over the way customer data is stored and managed.

Is it flexible enough to allow you to align with third-party privacy policies?

If you want to integrate with partner databases, your CIAM vendor should ensure that its data is used in accordance with the respective privacy policies. A good CIAM solution will keep track of the rights and encumbrances attached to each data element, whether it came from a customer or a third party.

Control access to granular customer data

Not every employee, partner and vendor should have equal access to your customer data. Your CIAM solution must provide granular control over who can access your customer data. Scoped access helps dictate which marketers, partners, ad networks, technologies and administrators get access to which data elements.

Your brand has different usage rights to different data assets. If you have permission to use a customer’s data in an email campaign, your CIAM solution should be able to sync that data over to your email service provider. If you don’t have that permission, it won’t be synced over.

Scale to meet business needs

When there is an uptick of online activity, your CIAM solution can’t fumble. Every one of your customers should be logged in as smoothly as if they were the one customer that matters most to the brand. Your CIAM infrastructure should be designed to handle a burst of users. That scalability during high-demand periods makes a big difference to your customers’ experiences.

Productized Integrations

CIAM is the most valuable when it enhances all of the touchpoints that you already have in the customer journey. Consider using an independent CIAM solution that isn’t tied to a suite of marketing products. Identity and access management should exist outside of an all-in-one marketing technology cloud, as rapid change in the landscape does not allow anyone to truly consolidate on one cloud vendor.

RESTful APIs

While productized integrations allow for a quicker path to value, it’s all about the APIs when you want deeper customization.

All serious CIAM solutions offer APIs, but you want flexibility baked into your CIAM solution so it can accommodate changes in customer behavior and technologies available in the market. Your CIAM solution should be founded on a layer of RESTful APIs that provide functionality, such as real-time alerts and profile changes.

Ease the data-collection and aggregation process

A good CIAM solution will have a way to keep data organized and accessible, bringing in the importance of schemas. Everything relies on good governance of a flexible schema. It helps you easily accommodate new use cases for your data, such as:

Where did the data come from?

Where should they sync to?

Who should have rights and access to it? To what extent?

Without data access control, you can’t manage data governance at all.

Choosing the right CIAM solution for your business will make a meaningful contribution to developing the appropriate digital strategy for your brand. CIAM impacts a spectrum of business processes and forward-thinking IT professionals can help drive real digital transformation at their enterprises by putting a CIAM solution in place. You can learn more about the differences between CIAM and IAM in our white paper, and to learn more about how Janrain can help your business drive digital transformation, you can contact us here.

]]>http://www.janrain.com/blog/blog-series-how-to-choose-the-best-ciam-platform-for-your-brand/Janrain is now certified for Privacy Shieldhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JanrainTechnology/~3/1bY7mKrdjMc/
Mon, 03 Oct 2016 16:42:18 +0000http://www.janrain.com/?p=31951A few months ago, I shared my thoughts on Privacy Shield developments and how businesses could prepare for it. Now that the Privacy Shield Framework...

A few months ago, I shared my thoughts on Privacy Shield developments and how businesses could prepare for it. Now that the Privacy Shield Framework has been adopted by the European Union and United States, I am happy to announce that Janrain has implemented the Privacy Shield Principles. In addition, our certification of adherence to those principles has been accepted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) following TRUSTe’s positive assessment that our practices align to the Privacy Shield requirements.

As the European Commission has recognized, participation in the Privacy Shield Framework, which replaces the invalidated Safe Harbor Framework, provides European individuals with more transparency about transfers of personal data to the United States and stronger protection of personal data. Accordingly, as Janrain has focused on enhancing its security and privacy controls, increasing transparency and providing stronger protection for the personal data of our clients’ customers, it made sense for us to participate in the Privacy Shield Framework.

For further information about Janrain’s privacy practices, please see our Privacy Statement.